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Saturday, September 21, 2013

In Which I Light the Night

Storms came pounding through the area last night. No thunder and lightning, just lots of lovely rain.I was all cozy in bed listening to the rain and reading Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman. This is the first in a mystery series starring unemployed journalist Tess Monaghan. Tess lives in an apartment over the bookstore owned by her Aunt Kitty; she is fit from sculling on the Patapsco River and running; and she tries to make ends meet by working part time in the bookstore and doing some clerking work for an uncle who has a state job.Things pick up for her when her best friend and fellow rower, Rock, is accused of murdering a high-profile lawyer who just happens to be having an affair with Rock's fiancée. So Tess is digging around trying to find proof of her friend's innocence.I can't say that I am very committed to the characters, but it is an easy bedtime read and it is the first in a series so I will give it time.Anyway, in the middle of chapter ten, there was a huge BOOM and the lights went out. It took me a second or two to figure out what had happened because I am reading the book on my Kindle Fire and of course it stayed lit. The rest of the house was pitch black. So I have found another use for the Kindle besides holding books. It makes a great flashlight! I climbed out of bed and held the lighted ebook in front of me as I padded to the front of the house to see that, yes, the entire neighborhood had gone dark. I trundled back to bed and continued reading for a while. I know that a book can light up one's imagination, but I had no idea that I could use one to light up the room in a power outage. I am glad to know that I am surely getting my money's worth from my Kindle - in more ways than one.

4 comments:

Great additional use for a Kindle! You didn't even have to stop reading because you had no power.

I've only read one book by Laura Lippmann, and I really liked it--I can't remember the name of it, but it was a stand alone, not one of a series. I've wanted to read more by her, but you know how that is...too many intriguing books and not enough time.

I've read several of the Tess Monaghan series and have come to like them a lot. It helps that I'm living in Philadelphia, not too far from Baltimore, so I can picture some of the places in the books and imagine Tess roaming the streets when I'm in Baltimore.